AGARTALA, September 20 (TIWN): State Govt has been campaigning over the years that the health care facilities in the state can easily be compared to any other state in the country. But the ground reality is that a majority of the health centers located outside Agartala do not even have movable transport facilities so that doctors and health staffs can attend to the patients who ate suffering from various illnesses. The recent outbreak of malaria epidemic has once again revealed the hollowness of the state govt's claim about Heath services. Rather, it also showed that the funds allocated by the centre from time to time have not been properly utilized.

In the Executive Summary of ''Report of Visit of NVBDCP Team to Tripura,22nd-27th June 2014" Addl Director of National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme( NVBDCP) Dr Avadhesh Kumar categorically highlighted the negligence of Health Department in dealing with malaria epidemic.

       Reporting on the outbreak of Malaria, Dr Avdhesh Kumar clearly pointed," The outbreak has become extensive mainly due to a system failure from top to bottom(ASHAs to State Health Society & beyond) as evident from the following:

1) Early warning signals were missed in 2nd week of May 2014 in Dhalai District ; NVBDCP team visited 2 districts in 1st week of June 2014 and informed/advised the health authorities

2) DDT spray was delayed

3) Inadequate manpower due to unusual delay in recruitment of NVBDCP contractual staff;and

4) Poor monitoring & supervision mainly due to lack of mobility support"

      The report also showed ," Tripura is one of the seven north-eastern states where Intensified Malaria Control Project- II is being implemented since October 2010 with financial support from GFATM . The state comprises of 8 districts. ....The surveillance is very poor . Referral mechanism is also poor in all the districts.... monitoring & supervision by the state officials of the programme needs enhancement." The serious allegations that have raised in this report is ," In October 2010, under the IMPC-II  the state was provided additional contractual manpower at different levels. However, 3 state consultant out of 5; 7 District VBD consultants out of 8 and 2 MTS out of 25 ate lying vacant for more than 3 years. besides, 500 contractual MPWs were also sanctioned in 2007 but majority of the posts could not be filled....The non-recruitment of manpower vacant is hampering the functioning of programme implementation activities at State/district level, besides monitoring and supervision is almost negligible." The question is where is the sanctioned fund for the contractual MPWs lying since October 2010. Interesting only in the last week's Review Meeting of the Health Department Chief Minister Manik Sarkar asked the officials to recruit 500 MPWs. Is it a way of diverting the attention of the people from the fund allotted in 2010 for the said purpose?

       About the Recording & Reporting Mechanism,  NVBDCP reports say," The data being reported at State HQ is not informative due to following reasons . Moreover, different reporting formats have been circulated by different state health authorities (SPO, NVBDCP, State Surveillance Officer, IDSP; Chief Secretary) adding to the confusion at reporting units:

1) Incomplete & irregular reporting , all units not reporting regularly;

2) Duplication of data as data from field (camp) ,OPD and IPD is combined and reported

3) Denominator is missing in most of data set;

4) PV/Of cases not being reported separately;

5) At some health facilities, the authenticity of data could not be verified by the team due to insufficient data records."

     About the Monitoring & Supervision of Malaria epidemic , the NVBDCP reports say," The monitoring and supervision is poor at various levels of health care systems as MOI/C,  DMOs and state officials are not visiting field due to non-availibility of vehicles. MTSs are also not supervising field activities as most of them have not been provided motorbikes." The reports also show some serious negligence on the part of Health Department , Govt of Tripura especially in controlling the malaria epidemic.